BNFO 300 
Molecular Biology Through Discovery
Course at a Glance (Strategies): Group Discussion and Collaboration
Spring 2016 

Group discussion in class
Group discussion out of class
Critiques
How to find and communicate with others

Group discussion in class

You will spend considerable time in class in small groups figuring out how to do problems or perform an experiment. This will work best if you look over the problems and experiments beforehand. This will allow you to bring something to the group. You needn't be an expert at all aspects of the problems, but come as an expert in something. If you do, the group will become stronger than any individual. If you don't, people may not want to play with you.

Group discussion outside of class

There are two major ways of making a scientific area more interesting:

  1. Read deeply on the topic
  2. Talk with others who share your interest
You'll have an opportunity to read deeply (described elsewhere). Here I'll talk about the second route. I encourage you to address the problem sets in groups (exams are a different matter), either continuing an interaction that started in class or forming a new group. In the end, however, the responses you turn in should reflect processes of your own mind, expressed in your own words. There's no point in my looking at a group effort, since my goal in responding to work handed in is to figure out what your individual thought processes are and to help you find more effective ones. A good strategy would be to work with a group as much as you like, and then put aside what the group accomplished and redo the problems from the beginning, alone, according to your own understanding.

Critiques

An important part of scientific collaboration is service as a critic. You do a kindness to your collaborator if you read a summary or proposal and point out what the author may be too close to see. You will have opportunity to perform such a service, offering critiques of your colleagues summaries and research proposals.

You may object that you don't know enough to critique another's work regarding molecular biology. There's some truth in this, but only a little. You have two great resources to draw upon: your naivete and your honesty. Together, they allow you to serve your colleagues in a valuable way that I cannot, since it is difficult for me to put aside what I already know. You can say, "I don't understand what you mean when you say X." Since you and others like you are the primary audience for the summaries and proposals, confessing that you do not understand something points out a deficiency in the communication, one that might not be apparent to the author.

How to find and communicate with others

  • To find me and the TA, go to the Who We Are page.
     
  • To find each other, go the same Who We Are page and go from there to the Who's Who page, through which you can e-mail specific people in the class or the entire class (given the ID and password that you'll be sent).
     
  • Or meet with your colleagues in real time. Many bioinformatics hang out at odd hours in the lounge on the third floor of Harris Hall (near the computer lab, Room 3112).
     
  • Or you can meet with them virtually in real time, using one of the virtual BioBIKE rooms in Wimba reserved for us, allowing you to text, talk, and share screens. To learn how to do this, see the instructions on the Links page.